List of English words of German origin
There are a number of German terms for which there are no useful English equivalents. Because of their usefulness, these terms – called loan words – have entered the English lexicon. This list (with nearest synonyms) includes: *Ablaut (the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information) *Achtung (attention) *Aha-Erlebnis/Aha-Effekt (autodidactic discovery) *Angst (a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity) *Ansatz (one of the most used German loan words in the English-speaking world of science) *Bildungsroman (a novel regarding personal character growth) *Blitz ("lightning", came to be known as a metaphor for "extremely fast"/a explicably fast maneuver or movement.) *Blitzkrieg (lightning war) *Bratwurst (sausage) *Doppelgänger (a ghostly counterpart of a living person) *Ersatz (being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation) *Festschrift (a volume of writings by different authors presented as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar) *Fraktur (a typeface style resembling blackletter) *Gastarbeiter (guest worker) *Gedankenexperiment (a thought experiment) *Gegenschein (a light phenomenon in a dark night sky) *Gemütlich (comfortable), Gemütlichkeit (cordiality, friendliness) *Gesamtkunstwerk (comprehensive work) *Gestalt (epiphany, a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts) *Glockenspiel *Götterdämmerung (literally - twilight of the gods; a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder) *Hinterland (countryside far away from urban areas) *Kindergarten (nursery, lit. Garden of children or Garden for children) *Lebensraum (space required for life, growth, or activity, compare to Elbow room, Living-room') *Leitmotiv (a dominant recurring theme) *Meister ((master/teacher, Ex. ''Mr.; compare to Maestro) -- See also the words from Todesfuge: "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" by Paul Celan) *Mittelschmerz (middle pain, used to refer to ovulation pain) *Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former Eastern Bloc; Ost means East in german) *Pretzel Pastry of German origin, the name cames from the German word "Brezel". *Poltergeist (a noisy usually mischievous ghost held to be responsible for unexplained noises) *Putsch (revolution; a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government) *Realpolitik (politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives) *Rucksack (backpack) *Sauerkraut (sour cabbage) *Schadenfreude (enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others) *Sturm und Drang (lit. "storm and stress"; turmoil) *Über (ultra, "very"), Übermensch (superman/superhuman) *Überfremdung claim that some aspect of a culture has been too heavily penetrated by foreign influence *Umlaut (the diacritic over the vowels "ä", "ö" and "ü", or more generally the phenomenon of vowel shifts such as the one in German that is represented by this diacritic) *Urheimat (original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language) *Ursprache (proto-language) *Waldsterben (forest dieback) *Wanderlust (strong longing for or impulse toward wandering) *Weltanschauung (a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint) *Weltschmerz (lit. "world-pain"; mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state) *Wirtschaftswunder (designates the upturn experienced in the West German and Austrian economies after the Second World War) *Wunderkind (a child prodigy) *Zeitgeist ("spirit of the times"; actually a German calque originating from a Shakespeare translation) See also *List of German expressions in English *German placename etymology *German name *List of Spanish words of Germanic origin *List of Portuguese words of Germanic origin *List of English words of Yiddish origin * de:Liste deutscher Wörter im Englischen es:Germanismo gl:Xermanismo hr:Germanizam nl:Germanisme no:Germanisme pl:Germanizm ru:Германизм sh:Germanizam